Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that he thinks one doesn't has to be a founder to be a successful CEO, but that status can give a lot of advantages that people might otherwise miss out on.
The 31-year-old Internet entrepreneur shared his perspective in response to a question from tech pundit Om Malik, who posed a question to Zuckerberg how he thinks founder-CEOs are judged differently from non-founder CEOs, Re/code reported.
Malik wanted to know if this double standard is what created Wall Street's angst with Twitter, where non-founder Dick Costolo stepped down after months of criticism and pressure from investors.
"I can answer that," wrote Zuckerberg, along with a smiley face emoticon, adding that he doesn't think there's anything that makes founders intrinsically better at running companies than non-founder CEOs. There are plenty of good leaders who are both.
He added "if you have control of the company, like I do at Facebook and an increasing number of founders do, then it is very difficult for investors to fire you," which means one doesn't need to worry about losing his job over a couple of bad quarters or controversial short term decisions and that makes it easier for him to make the "correct" decisions.
Zuckerberg, who once tried to buy Twitter in its infancy and is once again mulling a purchase, as per sources, didn't weigh in on who he thinks Twitter's new CEO should be, but he did note that there are some clear benefits to having a founder at the helm.
Zuckerberg, who never mentioned Twitter by name in his lengthy nine-paragraph answer, wrote about the importance of building a strong executive team, a notable mention considering he once famously described Twitter's executive team as people who had driven "a clown car into a gold mine and fell in.
